Eyes Wide Shut, Part 1 (Erotic 90’s, Part 20)

A preview of the new season of You Must Remember This, which covers the late careers of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Vincente Minnelli and ten other directors who began their careers in the silent or early sound eras, and were still making movies in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, in spite of the challenges posed by massive cultural changes and their advanced age. In this mini-episode we’ll discuss the parallels between this history and today, from the tech industry takeover of Hollywood to the late work of Coppola and Scorsese; the interview with George Cukor that inspired the title of this season; the Orson Welles-Peter Bogdanovich-Quentin Tarantino connection that informs the way we think about “old man” movies, and much more. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new season of You Must Remember This is just over a month away, but to tide you over, have a listen to a special presentation: an episode of Nate DiMeo's wonderful podcast "The Memory Palace." This episode, titled "AKA Leo," tells the story of the lion that became iconically associated with MGM. If you like what you hear, check out Nate's fabulous new book, The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past, out now! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're enjoying You Must Remember This, you may also like Talking Pictures, a movie memories podcast. On this episode of Talking Pictures, you'll hear Ben Mankiewicz in conversation with Carol Burnett. Carol Burnett’s life has always spun around the movies. She tells Ben about her childhood spent in Hollywood movie theaters, the famous actor who helped her break into showbiz, and the movie parodies in her groundbreaking television variety show. In fact, at 91, Carol Burnett remembers more about movies than Ben! We cap it all off with a delightful Super 8 complete with seasonal gems. Plus, Carol and Ben discuss their Wordle stats…listen to find out who’s winning. Listen to Talking Pictures wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first episode of You Must Remember This tells the story of actress Kim Novak -- a top box office draw of the late 1950s and the iconic star of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo -- and her painful struggles to assert herself from the mid-20th century through well into the 21st, in a Hollywood that repeatedly sent her the message that she was only valuable for the way she looked, while also insisting that she didn’t quite look good enough. Originally released in April 2014, this episode has been “lost” for almost as long due to copyright issues with its soundtrack. Today, in honor of the podcast’s ten year anniversary, we’re rereleasing this episode with new music, largely re-recorded voiceover, and just enough of the original episode intact so you can hear how far the show has come over the course of a decade. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our first guest on Talking Pictures is writer director Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, It’s Complicated, The Holiday). Recorded at her home, host Ben Mankiewicz talks with Meyers about casting Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, getting script advice from Sunset Boulevard director Billy Wilder, and they discuss what it’s like to become famous for her interiors. Spoiler: it’s frustrating! Nancy Meyers also answers our Super 8 questionnaire and reveals which film had her running from the theater in absolute terror. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In part 2 of the Eyes Wide Shut story, the movie is finally unveiled, and critics are divided on its quality, and the use of digital effects to evade an NC-17 rating. Where could Hollywood eroticism go from here? We’ll wrap up the Erotic 90s story with some thoughts on Richard Gere’s two-decade journey from American Gigolo to becoming PEOPLE Magazine’s 1999 “Sexiest Man Alive,” and other ways in which time and politics combined to make that which was once transgressive harmlessly mainstream. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the peak of their careers, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman left Hollywood for two years to collaborate with legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick on an erotic drama that the media speculated would pull back the curtain on maybe the most fascinating famous couple in the world. Though the meta element can’t be ignored, what Eyes Wide Shut actually ended up being is much more interesting. It’s a culmination of every theme and trope we’ve discussed across Erotic 80s and 90s, and the last film of the twentieth century headlined by American superstars to question the moral rot of the rich and powerful. In part 1 of the Eyes Wide Shut story, we’ll analyze the film and the media frenzy over the mystery of its making. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If Adrian Lyne’s Lolita became a case study of what Hollywood and America didn’t want to acknowledge about its sexualization of young girls, as the 90s came to a close the culture was full of “acceptable” depictions of teens in heat. Two hit films from 1998 and 1999, Wild Things and Cruel Intentions, adapted classic templates of adult sexual manipulation to turn teen girls into femme fatales (probably not coincidentally, both featured actresses, Neve Campbell and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who were famous for playing high school students on TV). Also no coincidence: these films entered the culture simultaneous to the debut of 17 year-old Britney Spears, whose videos and persona centered her status as “not a girl, not yet a woman.” To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the previous decade, Adrian Lyne had made two movies (Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal) that had grossed over $100 million in the US alone. With carte blanche to do whatever he wanted, he made an adaptation of the Nabokov novel about a 40-year-old pedophile’s obsession with his adolescent step-daughter – and no distributor wanted to release it. In a decade rife with the commodification and sexualization of young teens (see our previous episode on Drew Barrymore), what lines did Lyne’s Lolita cross? To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most notorious – and least seen – erotic narrative films of the 90s, Boxing Helena was the misbegotten passion project of Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch. Four years after Boxing Helena, the elder Lynch released one of his most controversial films, Lost Highway, which tackles similar themes as Boxing Helena, including male sexual fragility and the “Madonna-Whore” complex. Today we’ll talk about how Boxing Helena became bigger as a punchline than a movie, and we’ll trace David Lynch’s career as a provocateur to try to explain why his excavation of the dark, sexual core of Americana was celebrated when he made Blue Velvet, and pilloried a dozen years later when he made Lost Highway. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices